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5 Major Media Misquotes That Hurt Israel’s Image During the War
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA.
There is a meme (a humorous image generally posted on social media) that has been widely shared online for years.
It depicts a black-and-white image of 16th US President Abraham Lincoln with a quotation: “The problem with quotes found on the internet is that they are often not true.”
While it is clear to everyone that it is a fake Lincoln quote, the same cannot be said of every false quotation.
Whether deliberate or by mistake — either a mistranslation or a misquotation — here are some of the most outrageous examples of false quotes published by the media since the start of the war.
1. BBC News Claims Israel “Targeting” Medics
In November 2023, the BBC was forced to issue an apology after one of its anchors misquoted a Reuters report during a live broadcast, and claimed that the IDF was targeting medical professionals during its raid on Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, which had been used as a Hamas command center.
Reuters correctly quoted an IDF spokesman: “Our medical teams and Arabic-speaking soldiers are on the ground to ensure that these supplies reach those in need.”
However, the BBC instead announced on-air that the Israeli military was “targeting people including medical teams as well as Arab speakers.”
An apology was later read out by a second presenter, who announced: “What we should have said is that IDF forces included medical staff and Arabic speakers for this operation. We apologize for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”
The IDF clearly states it is bringing medical teams & Arabic speakers into Al-Shifa Hospital to help patients.@BBCNews reinterprets it to libel the IDF as *targeting* medical teams & Arabic speakers.
Just how much lower can the BBC go? https://t.co/I9kVy3MC87
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 15, 2023
2. Israel’s “Genocidal” Intent
In January, a staff writer at The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg, penned a piece headlined, ‘What Constitutes a Smoking Gun?‘ in part to reference the case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
Rosenberg discussed comments made by the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in the early days of the war, in which he allegedly declared that Israel was “fighting human animals,” and that “Gaza won’t return to what it was before … We will eliminate everything.”
The remark was suggested by the likes of NPR and the BBC as evidence of Israel’s intention to violate international humanitarian law.
The major problem with this, Rosenberg pointed out, was that the quote attributed to Gallant was inaccurate.
What Gallant actually said when he addressed a group of soldiers just three days after the Hamas massacre was: “Gaza will not return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.”
Rosenberg explained:
This isn’t a matter of interpretation or translation. Gallant’s vow to ‘eliminate it all’ was directed explicitly at Hamas, not Gaza. One doesn’t even need to speak Hebrew, as I do, to confirm this: The word Hamas is clearly audible in the video […]
And yet, the misleadingly truncated version of Gallant’s quote has not just been circulated on NPR and the BBC. The New York Times has made the same elision twice, and it appeared in The Guardian, in a piece by Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch. It was also quoted in The Washington Post, where a writer ironically claimed that Gallant had said “the quiet part out loud,” while quietly omitting whom Gallant was actually talking about.
As Rosenberg observed, the Gallant misquoting error had profound consequences — it “misled readers, judges, and politicians.”
3. The “500 Dead” in Hospital Blast
The Al-Ahli Hospital blast was perhaps the most outrageous example of poor journalism since the onset of the war.
Numerous respected media organizations abandoned basic journalistic due diligence and immediately blamed Israel for “striking” the medical facility and killing hundreds of civilians in the process.
Evidence quickly emerged that a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket was responsible, and that the death toll was nowhere near 500.
However, author and journalist David Zweig noticed that this was not the only media malpractice that occurred in the reportage of the Ah-Ahli explosion.
In an article on his Substack, Zweig questioned where the “500 killed” line that was uncritically parroted by the media had originated.
After tracking down where the first mention of this figure occurred (in a social media post by Qatari mouthpiece Al Jazeera), Zweig said there was “zero evidence” that was what the Hamas-run health ministry had said.
Zweig explained:
Beyond the evidentiary particulars in the debate over the origin of the blast is the question of whether news outlets should uncritically report claims from Hamas, including, or perhaps especially, when it provides statistics […]
Yet assessing whether or not Hamas’s claims are credible is a step beyond the most basic consideration: Did the media accurately report what a Hamas spokesperson said?
Zweig hypothesizes that Al Jazeera’s English account published the false information based on an interview given by Ashraf Al-Qidra, a spokesman in Gaza’s health ministry.
Here’s a thread of all the news articles from outlets that were incredibly quick to blame Israel, taking statements from Hamas at face value. @CNN quick reminder, the Health Ministry in Gaza is run by Hamas. pic.twitter.com/wl5CynI3q1
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 17, 2023
4. Isaac Herzog’s “Entire Nation”Comments
Sometimes misquoting is not done by altering the words of a statement, but by omitting parts of a statement to alter its overall meaning or intention.
This was true of the remarks made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog at a news conference held just five days after the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Speaking to reporters, Herzog said that he held “an entire nation” responsible for the massacre, which he later stressed in an op-ed was a reference to the many Palestinian civilians who also took part in the killings and sexual assaults inside Israel, as well as the crowds in Gaza who desecrated the bodies of dead Israelis that were brought back as trophies.
In the same October 12 press conference, Herzog said there was no excuse for killing innocent civilians, and confirmed Israel’s commitment to respecting the international laws of war.
Yet, the comments from Herzog that found their way into news reports were the former, with media outlets paraphrasing them in headlines such as, “Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets.”
President Herzog later criticized the South African prosecution that brought a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice for knowingly twisting his words to suggest genocidal intent on Israel’s part in the war.
5. CBS Misquotes the Pope
As is tradition on the Christian holiday Easter Sunday, Pope Francis presided over Mass in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican and delivered his “Urbi et Orbi” blessing from the balcony.
During the speech, he addressed the war in Gaza and called for a ceasefire and for the “prompt release of the hostages seized on 7 October last and for an immediate cease-fire in the Strip.”
Yet, when CBS News reported the Pope’s address, the word “hostages” had been substituted for “prisoners.”
It was a baffling decision that suggested CBS News saw some kind of equivalence between the innocent Israelis kidnapped on October 7 and the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for whom they may be swapped under the terms of a deal with Hamas.
It is a subtle mistake but an insidious one.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post 5 Major Media Misquotes That Hurt Israel’s Image During the War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jews, Israelis Targeted in Austria Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents; Local Jewish Community Calls for Action
Illustrative: Pro-Palestinian protesters shout slogans and hold flags during a demonstration against Israel’s military action in the Gaza strip, in Vienna, July 20, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
Austria is facing a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel rhetoric, prompting outrage from the country’s Jewish community and urgent calls for authorities to take swift action against growing anti-Jewish hatred.
On Saturday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists burst into the opening of the Salzburg Festival — one of the world’s premier events for opera, music, and drama — waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slogans.
As Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler began his opening speech at the event, six individuals stormed the stage, aggressively waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Blood on your hands!” along with other antisemitic slurs.
The Salzburg Festival.
A frenzied white Austrian on stage, screaming in German about those bloody J*ws.
I’m sure we’ve seen that before… pic.twitter.com/b6oNyTwZRT
— Joo
(@JoosyJew) July 28, 2025
The incident raised alarming questions about the event’s security, as the six protesters gained easy access while wearing fake, misspelled staff IDs with fictitious names, revealing a clear failure in background checks.
According to festival director Lukas Crepaz, security measures and control checks have been significantly strengthened. The six activists were arrested, and authorities continue to investigate the incident.
Elie Rosen, president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, condemned the incident, calling the disruption of the Salzburg Festival’s opening a “targeted political provocation, carried by openly anti-Israel rhetoric.”
“Jewish life in Austria must not become the collateral damage of political agitation,” Rosen said in a statement. “We often hear powerful statements at commemorative events condemning antisemitism.”
“But where are Israel’s outspoken supporters when real solidarity is needed? Antisemitism takes many forms and frequently starts with the silence of the majority,” she continued. “Hatred toward Israel is not a legitimate form of protest.”
In a separate incident last week, an Israeli couple was denied access to a campsite in Ehrwald, a village in western Austria, after attempting to make a reservation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
According to local media, the couple attempted to register at the campsite, but after revealing their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and asked to leave, forcing them to find alternative accommodations.
“We have no place for Jews here,” the campsite operator reportedly told them.
When asked for comment, the campsite operators told the German newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, “These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”
In another incident last week, a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians reported being refused service at a pizzeria in Vienna after staff overheard them speaking Hebrew.
One of the musicians recounted that while they were ordering their food, the waiter asked them which language they were speaking. When they replied Hebrew, the waiter allegedly told them, “In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.”
“The initial shock and humiliation were profound. But what struck us even more deeply was what came next – or rather what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine – as though nothing had happened,” one of the musicians wrote in a post on X.
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‘All of Our Strength’: Over 1,000 Pro-Israel Activists Gather in DC for Solidarity Conference
2025 Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Photo: ICC.
Over 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and activists amassed in Washington, DC on July 27-29 to attend the Israel on Campus Coalition’s annual National Leadership Summit (NLS), an electric event which achieved creating the atmosphere of both a festival of Jewish elation and an academic conference.
Founded in 2002, the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as inspiring college students to defend and hold pride in the state of Israel. One of its major initiatives is the “microgrants” program, which helps pro-Israel campus groups organize events about Israeli culture and society. Another, the ICC Community Impact Fellowship, awards college students a $1,000 stipend for completing a leadership seminar in which they are trained in civic engagement, coalition building, and rapidly responding to antisemitic and anti-Israel events on their campuses.
Demand for a spot at this year’s 2025 conference exceeded the nonprofit’s capacity to host the thousands of students who signed up to be a conferee at what is recognized as the largest gathering of pro-Israel students in the country. Hundreds were waitlisted and encouraged to reapply next year. Those whom ICC did select were flown out to DC and billeted at the Capital Hilton, all expenses paid. They were joined – for the first time ever – by a delegation of faculty from the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and staff from most major Jewish organization in the US, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to StandWithUs (SWU).
“We just ultimately believe that we’re better when we use all of our strength as a movement,” ICC chief executive Jacob Baime told The Algemeiner on Monday during an interview. “And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. The other side does as well, having mounted a highly professionalized coalition, well-funded, well-coordinated effort with many groups involved. We need our partners and the different perspectives they hold too.”
When The Algemeiner last attended NLS, the world was not yet one year removed from Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the deadliest day in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust. Jewish students and ICC staff, many of whom have family members and friends who were affected by the atrocities or were later drafted into the war it precipitated, were still laboring to comprehend what had become a new and unprecedented world – one in which classic antisemitic tropes had resurfaced to corrupt public debate, anti-Jewish violence occurred daily across the world, and anti-Zionist groups were taking over college campuses and converting them into outposts of antisemitic hate.
As such the event aimed to inspire Jewish students “take back the campus,” an effort advanced by an infantry of social media influencers.
This year’s NLS leaned more heavily into supplying students with information, facts, and statistics curated and presented by the most accomplished Middle East scholars, government leaders, and nonprofit executives in the global pro-Israel community. Social media influencers and celebrities took the stage as well, showcasing their strengths as spirited advocates who remind students why the issues under discussion relate to their contemporary experiences as young people and consumers.
Speakers included Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; Col. Miri Eisin of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; Miriam Elman of the Academic Engagement Network; and Dr. Ayal Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. On offer as giveaways were Douglas Murray’s recently published polemic On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization and Dina Powell McCormick and David McCormick’s co-authored book, titled Who Believed in You?: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World.
“We wanted students to engage with ideas that touch on the entirety of the campus ecosystem and the subjects they may be asked to comment on,” Baime explained to The Algemeiner. “Oct. 7, the war, and its aftermath have changed the American pro-Israel movement forever.”
The obverse side of the conference’s educational objectives was wholesome fun for the 800 college aged conferees in attendance. They were treated to a buoyant concert in the Hilton’s Presidential Ballroom featuring the jazz-pop fusion act “All of the Above” and the rapper Duvbear, an 18-year-old who is emblematic of what Generation-Z calls “rizz.” Celebrities such as former NBA player Meta World Peace, former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho, and professional boxer George Foreman III afforded the students quick meet and greets and selfies. Capital Hilton staff carted out pounds of food – Latin, Asian, and Kosher – from its kitchens every several hours, fostering opportunities for socializing and being photographed on an ICC-themed “red carpet.”
University of California, Davis rising junior Toby Jacob told The Algemeiner that the nonprofit’s strength is its staff.
“The staff here is so knowledgeable and so capable,” Jacob said. “It can feel really scary when you’re dealing with these like large scale issues in your student government, with your administration – and to have people who have the resources to walk you through it is vital.”
Tessa Veksler, an NLS 2025 moderator who became the most recognizable pro-Israel activist of Generation-Z after being elected the first Shabbat-observant president of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s student government, agreed.
“When I was on campus going through the worst of the worst, I knew that ICC had my back and that I could count on the staff and the organization to be there at a moment’s notice,” Veksler said. “They exceptionally equip students with the tools to be able to lead themselves, and so there is an expectation that if you are an ICC fellow that you take the tools ICC gives and put in the work to go and become involved in student government and be the person to make the impact.”
She continued, “It’s a remarkable thing, and there’s a reason why I have stayed as involved as I am.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Devastated’: Wesley LePatner, Killed in Manhattan Mass Shooting, Was a Jewish Communal, Philanthropic Leader
A man holding a rifle walks into an office building at 345 Park Avenue shortly before a shooting that killed several people, in the Midtown Manhattan district of New York City, US, July 28, 2025, in a still image taken from surveillance video. Photo: Surveillance Camera/Handout via REUTERS
Wesley LePatner, an executive at Blackstone and a Jewish communal leader, was one of the victims of the mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan on Monday that killed four people and wounded a fifth in addition to the shooter, who died by suicide.
LePatner, 43, was an active member of the Jewish community and served on the UJA Federation of New York’s board of directors, which said it is “devastated by the tragic loss.”
“Wesley was extraordinary in every way — personally, professionally, and philanthropically,” the federation wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “An exceptional leader in the financial world, she brought thoughtfulness, vision, and compassion to everything she did. In 2023, we honored her with the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at our Wall Street Dinner, recognizing her commitment to our community and her remarkable achievements, all the more notable as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.”
In her acceptance speech, LePatner said, “Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I would be up on this stage two decades later [after attending her first UJA Wall Street dinner]. UJA has many super-powers, but its most important in my view is its power to create a sense of community and belonging, and that ability to create a sense of community and belonging matters now more than ever.”
She also explained that “UJA stepped in early and fixed my feeling out of place by connecting me with senior Goldman Sachs women who were further along in their careers and personal lives, but equally committed to their Jewish community and identity.”
“I was an American,” she said, “but I was first and foremost Jewish.”
LePatner was also a supporter of Israel, leading a solidarity mission with UJA after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“In the wake of Oct. 7, Wesley led a solidarity mission with UJA to Israel, demonstrating her enduring commitment in Israel’s moment of heartache,” the UJA Federation of New York said in its statement. “She lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people.”
In addition to serving on the board of directors of the New York UJA, she was also on the board of trustees at The Abraham Joshua Heschel School — a pluralistic Jewish day school in New York. The Forward reported that school representatives wrote in an email that “there are no right words for this unfathomable moment of pain and loss.”
“It was a rare z’chut, a rare privilege, to know Wesley and to learn from her. She was a uniquely brilliant and modest leader and parent, filled with wisdom, empathy, vision, and appreciation,” they continued.
David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council, posted on X that “Wesley was an amazing person who was also tremendously talented leader. She volunteered with her kids [at the Met Council] to feed those in need.”
LePatner graduated from Yale summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and met her husband on the first day of school in 1999.
She is survived by her husband and two children.